Ten Tears After …
A Look Back on How Keystone Central Students Helped Katrina Victims
LOCK HAVEN – It’s been 10 years since devastating Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. In addition to the unimaginable damage to New Orleans, the hurricane rolled into the beachfront town of Pass Christian, Mississippi on August 23, 2005, producing 28 foot storm surges. Over 200 people died during that event in Mississippi in a storm that killed over 1,800 people between August 23 and August 31 of 2005. Hurricane Katrina devastated residential areas, completely destroying or making uninhabitable an estimated 300,000 homes.
It also set in motion a relief story of caring all the way north to Central Mountain High School.
In late 2005 with so many families still displaced in the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana and Mississippi an idea was formulated to help a family in the disaster area. Central Mountain students Kristen Brandt and Casey Poff proposed building a home in the school’s vo-tech department and then delivering that home to a deserving family in the devastated area of the gulf.
The details of such a huge undertaking were staggering. Beginning with approval of the project through the school, designing the plans for the home, to building codes in the receiver state, through massive fundraising projects, to thousands of volunteer hours, the project began to take shape.
Brandt returned home recently and talked about the memories from the 10-year-old project, what she termed a completely team effort. Many students and their parents, staff at Central Mountain High School and community volunteers worked diligently for the next 22 months to bring this project to its successful conclusion.
$20,000 was raised to build the home. Monies were raised through concerts, raffles and donations, along with countless other fund-raising projects. Local and area businesses donated supplies and services; trusses and transportation vehicles and community support were also donated.
She said Mississippi was selected as the state to receive the home as it was a state that could accept the project and is was the easiest to reach by transport. The woman chosen to receive the home was Myrtle Ashley of Pass Christian, Mississippi. She was selected out of twenty-five families in a lottery drawing. Ashley had three daughters and a son and they were without a home.
The project was completed in early November 2006. A delegation from Central Mountain High School, volunteers, senior class members Brandt and Poff, house designers and students Matt Yourn and Killian Bottorf and their family members successfully delivered the school-constructed home for Ashley and her family. ABC’s Good Morning America was on-hand to give national recognition to the students and to see the home placed on its foundation.
The Record caught up with Kristen Brandt and her mom Karen recently and asked what plans she had in mind for her future and an update since the Katrina project had been finished. In the time that has passed since 2006, Kristen has completed her undergraduate work and recently finished law school at William and Mary, passing the bar in July 2015. She’ll soon be leaving the Lock Haven area to travel to Cape Town, South Africa.
Brandt will be spending five months in South Africa with PASSOP (People against Suffering, Poverty and Oppression). PASSOP is a not-for-profit human rights organization devoted to fighting for the rights of asylum-seekers, refugees and immigrants in South Africa. She will be doing client consultations and working with refugees that may be seeking asylum. Kristen with be helping draft letters to the South African government if the refugees petitions for asylum have been denied.
While in law school she had her first internship in Ghana working with child prostitutes and helping their families. The internship was through the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice. The commission is an independent organization for the safeguarding of human rights in Ghana.
Besides Ghana, she has had the opportunity to travel to Honduras, Costa Rica, Europe and next South Africa. The Record asked Kristen about living and working in less than ideal living conditions. She responded that while she will miss her family and friends she found something appealing in living a simplistic life style not surrounded by the latest technology. There is a “striking contrast in materialism to nothing.” She also expressed surprise in finding “the joy that children have” despite living in areas of poverty and repression.
Asked why her direction in life was to help people in ravaged areas of the world she replied that the willingness to help others “came from my parents” who instilled a belief in the individual, that determination, energy, hard work and team work along with not accepting ‘no for an answer’ can lead to accomplishing many major projects, like building a home for hurricane ravaged Mississippi.
Today the home in Pass Christian is still believed to be in Myrtle Ashley’s family. Ms. Ashley passed away in 2011. She left behind her children, 19 grandchildren and 19 great grandchildren.
While the project was successful many roadblocks had to be surpassed along the way. Kristen’s mother Karen, told The Record that the kids learned that if you “can’t go in the front door, go around to a window.”
